[March 9, 2023 US time] At OFC 2023, the International Photonics & Electronics Committee (IPEC) successfully held a global optoelectronic technology summit. 

The theme of the session was "IPEC Overview of Optoelectronic Technologyand Industry Standards in the Cloud Era". The in-depth discussion was carried out around the evolution of the Data Center Network (DCN) to the data rates of 400 Gigabit Ethernet and beyond, as high as 1.6 Terabit per second, and the research progress of the IPEC Advanced Technology Working Group in the field of co-packaged optical interconnection (CPO) and related External Laser Sources (ELS) was shared. 

Jim, Vice President of Research and Development of HGGenuine USA, was invited to attend the IPEC forum and delivered a presentation on "The PIC Revolution in Optical Transceivers".

Large-scale data center operators are driving unprecedented growth in data communication speed. Jim Theodoras, VP of R&D of HGGenuine USA, pointed out that because the required bandwidth growth exceeds the responsiveness of individual serial channels, the industry has turned to focus on network parallelism and wavelength division multiplexing to achieve greater aggregate bandwidth. This, in turn, further increases the complexity of optical links, which is beyond the range of discrete optical components.

Both pluggable optics and CPO require PIC technology to support the continuous upgrading of switching networks. Jim concluded that photonic integrated circuit is no longer a research topic, but a necessary product to meet the requirements of future data communication.